Erich J. Prince is the editor at Merion West. Erich has contributed to a variety of publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Hartford Courant, The News & Observer, the Orlando Sentinel, and The Hill. His opinion writing has been honored with two awards from the Columbia University School of Journalism. He studied political science at Yale, completing his thesis on the history of polarization in the United States Congress.
“And things like rural broadband, having quality health care, just a good quality of life, good ability to get a great education—whether it’s going into a technical field college or university setting. We had a lot of different options for folks, and we’re slowly moving the needle.”
“One thing is for sure in Washington is, no matter how tight or tough times are, veterans are a class to themselves; they are an issue to themselves. Partisanship rarely ever creeps into the VA.”
“I told one of the other senators, ‘You’re a very pleasant, sweet person. But deep down, the public wants a son-of-a-gun. You’ve got to get stuff done.'”
“Most of all, I just want my constituents back home to know that I’m working for them, and that I’m not thinking about contributions from a big corporation when I’m in a committee hearing and questioning witnesses and when we’re voting on matters that are important to the working families in my district.”
“There’s not a single one of us who has not made mistakes in our lives, and we have a number of people who were in jails and prisons that made mistakes that they regret.”
“In a sense, the Founding Fathers feared democracy because of the tendency of people to be carried away by their passion and easily led astray by demagogues, and I think that our modern polarization, augmented by social media, could well bring their worst fears to reality.”
“In fact, one of my best training grounds was being a basketball referee. That taught me how to make tough decisions under tough circumstances where you already knew you were going to make half the people mad most of the time.”
“The last four or five years I was in the Senate, there was simply no Democrat more conservative than any Republican and no Republican more liberal than any Democrat. And that’s just wrong. It’s unnatural.”
“There are more wedge issues that divert our attention from the real issues. That’s what I found during my time in the Senate…But the Republicans wanted to send their Republican candidates out to campaign about gay marriage and abortion and flag burning. It’s all about control of the Senate.”
“The negative ads we’ve kind of moved into, starting in the nineties, have gotten worse and worse. You never see businesses do attack ads, right? If Coke did an attack ad against Pepsi, Pepsi would have to attack Coke…. You could suppress down an entire product category.”
“To tell you the truth, I am drawn to these dangerous events even though they scare the hell out of me. I am sure a shrink would have a field day with that…I guess there is an adrenaline rush in trying to capture images under dangerous situations and making it out alive.”
“It is my conviction that we are going through the greatest technological and economic shift in human history, and our political class is completely asleep at the switch.”
On the current trend towards drug liberalization: “Everybody I know who functions at a high level in society is fairly reliable and trustworthy. My husband is an oncologist, and I can tell you that hardworking cancer doctors don’t spend their free time getting high.”
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report discusses the left’s opposition to free speech, polarization, third party candidates, and finding common ground in an interview with Merion West.
“I think you have to separate conservatism from reactions to the Left. I don’t think they’re quite the same thing. Conservatism is starting to get more popular because of reaction to the Left.”
